I always love walking into a home and getting a real sense of someone’s personality--just by looking at the way it is decorated. One of the easiest, most fun places to showcase ‘YOU’ is on your bookshelves.

Breathe new life (your life!) into your bookshelves by trying out the following ideas:

USE YOUR COLLECTIONS

On the shelves in this image, the small collection of white ceramic cups and vases looks beautiful and intriguing. I want to ask the owner where each one came from—they feel like a little story waiting to be told!

If each of these items where displayed on a separate shelf, they would kind of get “lost.” Your collections will have the most impact, and look the most pleasing, when clustered together.

Think about what collections you have…maybe you don’t realize it is even a collection yet because your similar items are spread throughout the entire house.

Do you have a lot of vintage jars, pieces of driftwood, white vases, silver candlesticks, etc.? Gather items that are similar and group them together in a collection.

GROUP BY COLOR

Grouping books together by color has been a trend over the last few years. I did this to our bookshelves a year ago in the middle of the worst winter on record to bring a little color to our frozen world!

I think I smiled every time I walked through the room and saw all the color! I will admit it does make it a little more difficult to find a certain book. But since we don’t have an incredibly vast book library, it wasn’t a problem for us.

TRENDY PIECE

Have you ever passed on buying a very trendy or funky item that you loved, but you just had no idea where you would really use it?

Well, here is where to use it!

Bookshelves look so amazing with one or two pieces of crazy. Add a piece or two that has a story, or is completely reflective of your unique personality!

One last bit of advice if you are still feeling unsure about how to actually put it all together, use pinterest or catalogues to find bookshelves styled in the way that you love.

Mimic the layers and layout that are used in these images, by finding items that you already have (or purchase things) that have similar scale and colors.